Robert Gibbs was the White House Press Secretary for the first two years of the Obama administration. He was inept, tongue-tied, often unknowledgeable of the events he was being questioned about, and helped promote the image of obfuscation rather than transparency in the Obama White House. I've often wondered if he was removed for poor performance, or if he had just had enough of trying to cover for the Obama lies and couldn't take it anymore.
He was followed by Jay Carney, who held the job for nearly five years. Carney took the skill of lying through his teeth to new levels. How he could sleep at night is a mystery to any honest person. Carney continued to spew the Obama spin until the day he left the position. Border security, the success of obamacare, a video that caused Benghazi, there was no limit to his adroitness in weaving the administration's story, and he stuck with his comments, even when the press corps laughed at his answers.
Apparently Carney had enough, and now we have Josh Earnest. Earnest wasted no time in proving his own ability to muddy the waters with circumlocutory rhetoric. In answer to a question by Fox News's Ed Henry about the president being a bystander in the midst of all the crises going on he said:
I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the tranquility of the global community.
Right. That comment belongs in the spin Hall of Fame. Where in the world is there any tranquility right now?
Benghazi still unanswered and Libya more unstable than ever.
Egypt still in turmoil.
An invasion of illegal immigrants, drug dealers, thieves, and terrorists over the Mexican border, as well as Mexican army helicopters invading U.S. airspace, and soldiers firing on American border agents.
An American Marine unjustly held in a Mexican jail.
Civil war in Syria.
Iraq falling to Isis.
Afghanistan becoming more unstable as U.S. troops prepare to leave.
Iran thumbing its nose at the U.S. while it continues to develop nuclear power.
Russian invasion and theft of the Crimea.
A civil war backed by Russia erupting in Ukraine.
A belligerent Vladimir Putin continually challenging U.S. resolve.
Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and an Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip.
And now a Malaysian 777 airliner shot down with a Russian missile in the eastern Ukraine with possibly twenty-three Americans on board.
The world is falling apart, Americans are being murdered, and Obama, apparently unconcerned, tells jokes and then goes to eat a cheeseburger for another photo op (the one's he's not interested in) before going to another fund raiser. Business as usual, nothing serious enough to demand his time, everything lovely in the Obama utopia.
No doubt in his little mind more concerned with spinning his socialist or Muslim agenda, the world is a tranquil place. The reality is there has never been a president more out of touch with the plight of not only his own country, but the whole world. No president has been more disengaged and inactive in the face of crises since James Buchanan right before the U.S. Civil War.
And Josh Earnest? Another small-minded Obama worshipper. How can he ever do better than the delusional statement he just made? It will be interesting to see if he will be so lacking in character and personal integrity as to keep his job for the next two and half years.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Friday, July 11, 2014
Twenty-Five Years Ago Today
Twenty-five years ago this morning I was awakened by a phone call from the Assistant Squadron Duty Officer at VT-25 with the words no pilot ever wants to hear. "Mr. Patterson, we need you to come in right away. There's been an accident."
I was on the night schedule and had landed close to midnight, and didn't get to bed until about 2 a.m. I was scheduled for another night flight so I had slept in that morning. The call came at 8:30. "I'm coming," I said. I threw on a flight suit, quickly shaved and ran out to my car. Chase Field at Beeville, Texas was about ten miles from my apartment, but I walked into the Ready Room before nine.
I was the acting squadron Safety Officer while we waited for a pilot to complete Safety School at Monterey, California. An investigation was already being launched and I would be a big part of it. A UH-1 Huey helicopter was coming up from Corpus Christi to fly a Navy photographer and two other investigators to the site, but I decided to go in a van with supplies and equipment for the investigation rather than wait. It was about 45 miles to the crash site in a wooded farmer's field north of Naval Auxiliary Field Goliad, and as we passed a Navy fire truck returning to base we waved them down to get directions. We weren't far, a right turn on the next dirt road and a couple miles to a gate in the field. Military police had already cordoned off the area. We found the site, set up and started walking the crash area. We got there before the Huey.
Six students on an early event had taken off from Chase in TA-4J Skyhawks and made the five minute trip to Goliad to practice landings for their upcoming carrier qualifications. One by one they reached the initial and turned south for the Goliad runway. Something went wrong with the fifth student to arrive and he flew into the ground. The student behind him was the only witness to the crash. The investigation would determine that in turning to the field, the pilot had apparently been distracted changing radio frequencies. The initial was only 600 feet above the ground, and at 400 knots in a tight turn the plane lost altitude. The pilot apparently looked up to see his predicament at the last second. The wings came level, but the rate of descent was too great.
When we arrived the area looked like a battlefield; small fires, blackened earth and scorched bushes, smoke drifting across the scene and the smell of sulfur. We found some broken tree tops and lights from the plane where it had come down, and then the spot where it had hit the ground. It landed on a tree and flattened it, ripping the roots out so quickly that the dirt came up from the ground and covered the tree. The plane then caught a very hard mesquite tree at the root of the right wing. The wing ripped off and the plane began to tumble end over end. The engine at full bore kept on going until it had shed itself of the entire plane and finally stopped about four hundred yards from the initial point of impact.
We at first were puzzled about what happened to the wing. The plane was in a million pieces, but we couldn't find any wreckage of the wing. We finally found the landing gear at the base of a very large tree and then looked up. The entire wing was hung up in the branches of the tree. Moving forward through the scattered wreckage we started finding body parts. Then in the crook of a little v-shaped tree I knelt down over the most horrible thing I have ever seen. (Stop if you're squeamish.) The left side of the pilot's head, down to the jaw, the face gone, the left half of the neck down to the shoulder, and the left arm, all connected, lay right in the crook of that little tree. Just above on a branch parallel to the ground hung his g-suit without a burn mark on it. The positive ID was made from the dental records on that jaw, but we already knew who he was. Farther ahead we found his feet, one in a boot and one out. Then the cockpit where his pelvic and femur bones, completely devoid of any flesh, still sat in the seat. Then we found his heart with the aorta still attached.
I've never been in combat. I don't know how soldiers and Marines on the battlefield are able to cope when they see their comrades blown apart. I don't know how emergency crews that clean up after terrorist bombings or airline disasters handle it. All I know is that for me for weeks afterward every time I bent over the sink to brush my teeth the vision of those remains in the crook of that tree were in front of me.
As an instructor I made it a point every time I flew with a student for the first time to give him a Gospel tract and invite him to church. Only a couple ever came and none more than once. This particular student was a Marine and I had given him a tract. The last time I had flown with him was two months earlier. He was about to start the Air Combat Maneuvering syllabus, and he got into my back seat to go along for the ride on an ACM hop that I was leading. We did several setups with a student pilot in that stage. I remember his enthusiasm for the flight when in one engagement in a maneuver called a rolling scissors with student behind me I pulled the nose of my airplane up into a stall forcing him to fly out in front of me, and as I dropped the nose he was a sitting duck.
"Wow!" my passenger shouted over the intercom. "That was awesome." He was a nice young man by everybody's account. He had done well in training up until that one momentary lapse. I had the privilege of flying in a Missing Man formation over the base at his memorial service.
We picked up the body parts, put them in bags, and put them in coolers with ice to transport back to the flight surgeon for the autopsy, but we ran out of ice and room in the coolers so some bags were just sitting on the floor in the back of the van. Before we got home the van smelled like a meat locker at a butcher shop. The interesting thing was there was no blood, just chunks of flesh. The flight surgeon told me later it was the result of something called the Venturi effect, which happens when a body is torn apart so violently that the blood literally evaporates.
I never knew his spiritual condition. He was just a good guy, didn't get into trouble. But I couldn't get passed the question, Had I done enough? I think it must be that those in combat develop a coldness of heart, a way to put it behind them and forget it. It almost seems the only way they could keep their sanity. I don't say this as a criticism, but just as a way of trying to reconcile what I saw one time, with what some people have seen multiple times. For me, I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose the conviction of that question that was so penetrating then. "Have I done enough?"
Twenty-five years ago today.
I was on the night schedule and had landed close to midnight, and didn't get to bed until about 2 a.m. I was scheduled for another night flight so I had slept in that morning. The call came at 8:30. "I'm coming," I said. I threw on a flight suit, quickly shaved and ran out to my car. Chase Field at Beeville, Texas was about ten miles from my apartment, but I walked into the Ready Room before nine.
I was the acting squadron Safety Officer while we waited for a pilot to complete Safety School at Monterey, California. An investigation was already being launched and I would be a big part of it. A UH-1 Huey helicopter was coming up from Corpus Christi to fly a Navy photographer and two other investigators to the site, but I decided to go in a van with supplies and equipment for the investigation rather than wait. It was about 45 miles to the crash site in a wooded farmer's field north of Naval Auxiliary Field Goliad, and as we passed a Navy fire truck returning to base we waved them down to get directions. We weren't far, a right turn on the next dirt road and a couple miles to a gate in the field. Military police had already cordoned off the area. We found the site, set up and started walking the crash area. We got there before the Huey.
Six students on an early event had taken off from Chase in TA-4J Skyhawks and made the five minute trip to Goliad to practice landings for their upcoming carrier qualifications. One by one they reached the initial and turned south for the Goliad runway. Something went wrong with the fifth student to arrive and he flew into the ground. The student behind him was the only witness to the crash. The investigation would determine that in turning to the field, the pilot had apparently been distracted changing radio frequencies. The initial was only 600 feet above the ground, and at 400 knots in a tight turn the plane lost altitude. The pilot apparently looked up to see his predicament at the last second. The wings came level, but the rate of descent was too great.
When we arrived the area looked like a battlefield; small fires, blackened earth and scorched bushes, smoke drifting across the scene and the smell of sulfur. We found some broken tree tops and lights from the plane where it had come down, and then the spot where it had hit the ground. It landed on a tree and flattened it, ripping the roots out so quickly that the dirt came up from the ground and covered the tree. The plane then caught a very hard mesquite tree at the root of the right wing. The wing ripped off and the plane began to tumble end over end. The engine at full bore kept on going until it had shed itself of the entire plane and finally stopped about four hundred yards from the initial point of impact.
We at first were puzzled about what happened to the wing. The plane was in a million pieces, but we couldn't find any wreckage of the wing. We finally found the landing gear at the base of a very large tree and then looked up. The entire wing was hung up in the branches of the tree. Moving forward through the scattered wreckage we started finding body parts. Then in the crook of a little v-shaped tree I knelt down over the most horrible thing I have ever seen. (Stop if you're squeamish.) The left side of the pilot's head, down to the jaw, the face gone, the left half of the neck down to the shoulder, and the left arm, all connected, lay right in the crook of that little tree. Just above on a branch parallel to the ground hung his g-suit without a burn mark on it. The positive ID was made from the dental records on that jaw, but we already knew who he was. Farther ahead we found his feet, one in a boot and one out. Then the cockpit where his pelvic and femur bones, completely devoid of any flesh, still sat in the seat. Then we found his heart with the aorta still attached.
I've never been in combat. I don't know how soldiers and Marines on the battlefield are able to cope when they see their comrades blown apart. I don't know how emergency crews that clean up after terrorist bombings or airline disasters handle it. All I know is that for me for weeks afterward every time I bent over the sink to brush my teeth the vision of those remains in the crook of that tree were in front of me.
As an instructor I made it a point every time I flew with a student for the first time to give him a Gospel tract and invite him to church. Only a couple ever came and none more than once. This particular student was a Marine and I had given him a tract. The last time I had flown with him was two months earlier. He was about to start the Air Combat Maneuvering syllabus, and he got into my back seat to go along for the ride on an ACM hop that I was leading. We did several setups with a student pilot in that stage. I remember his enthusiasm for the flight when in one engagement in a maneuver called a rolling scissors with student behind me I pulled the nose of my airplane up into a stall forcing him to fly out in front of me, and as I dropped the nose he was a sitting duck.
"Wow!" my passenger shouted over the intercom. "That was awesome." He was a nice young man by everybody's account. He had done well in training up until that one momentary lapse. I had the privilege of flying in a Missing Man formation over the base at his memorial service.
We picked up the body parts, put them in bags, and put them in coolers with ice to transport back to the flight surgeon for the autopsy, but we ran out of ice and room in the coolers so some bags were just sitting on the floor in the back of the van. Before we got home the van smelled like a meat locker at a butcher shop. The interesting thing was there was no blood, just chunks of flesh. The flight surgeon told me later it was the result of something called the Venturi effect, which happens when a body is torn apart so violently that the blood literally evaporates.
I never knew his spiritual condition. He was just a good guy, didn't get into trouble. But I couldn't get passed the question, Had I done enough? I think it must be that those in combat develop a coldness of heart, a way to put it behind them and forget it. It almost seems the only way they could keep their sanity. I don't say this as a criticism, but just as a way of trying to reconcile what I saw one time, with what some people have seen multiple times. For me, I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose the conviction of that question that was so penetrating then. "Have I done enough?"
Twenty-five years ago today.
Friday, July 4, 2014
July 4
I hate being overseas on July 4. I hate being separated from my children. I hate missing baseball games, hot dogs, apple pie, BBQ cookouts, fireworks, patriotism and Mom. (Not necessarily in that order although it’s hard to put anything ahead of baseball ... or Mom.)
I hate being away at a time when the country is in such turmoil and uncertainty about who we are and our place in the world. We have a president who is a complete failure as a leader, who is completely devoid of honesty and probity, whose domestic and foreign policies are total disasters that have led to the border crisis and the crumbling of the Middle East. Obama and Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico had never been more secure. Now there is such a flood of illegals crossing that the government can’t handle them.
Obama assured us that his anti-military decimation of our Armed Forces and his persona of good will would bring Iran to the table and result in a peaceful Middle East. He boasted in 2012 that he had killed bin-Laden and that Al Qaeda was on the run. Now the sacrifice of thousands of Americans in Iraq is being squandered as the ISIS terrorist army, which is bigger than Al Qaeda ever hoped to be, rolls over Syria and Iraq, and Iran, with Russia’s help, is still working on a nuclear weapon and refuses to come to the table for talks. And Russia, unafraid of any Obama red lines, has stolen the Crimea from Ukraine.
America, the benefactor nation of the earth, is mocked, disrespected, and reviled worldwide by the same ungrateful nations that receive free handouts, and Obama, seemingly oblivious of the world that is falling apart around him, plays golf. At least Jimmy Carter could point to the Camp David Accords. Under Obama’s watch all the gains of the last thirty years are being lost. Obama compares himself with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, and has been compared by his lemmings to Jesus Christ. A more accurate comparison would be to Neville Chamberlain or Judas Iscariot.
I hate the Obama view of an unexceptional America where the Constitution, patriotism and love of country is mocked and despised. I’ve had numerous debates over the internet with liberals who have so little knowledge of our country and its founding, and so little understanding of history or the world events that made us what we are today, that they consider us all to be illegal aliens and therefore should leave the borders open for “undocumented immigrants,” that we must then take care of because it’s unfair that we have worked hard, achieved, and gotten wealthy while the illegals haven’t.
These are the low-information voters, the Blame-America-First crowd, that the left so lovingly courts, whose only contribution to intelligent discussion is ridicule and name-calling. They blame everything on racism, and bewail that we stole the whole continent from the Native Americans and ought to give it back. When confronted with action, however, not one of them is willing to give back what they personally own or have accumulated to the Indians.
I’m tired of this anti-American crowd that has no appreciation for their freedom, or the blood shed to secure it for them. I’m tired of a community organizer president who is so ignorant as to believe that Muslims had a great part in building America. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of Godless leftists who “boo” God, who rewrite history books and deny the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers, who condemn Conservatives for violating the separation of church and state because they hold Christian values, and then quote Scriptures that they don’t believe when it is convenient. I’m tired of the moral decay and the spiritual deadness that is leading America to the “ash-heap of nations.”
You know what? I don’t care what the anti-American crowd thinks.
This morning I began my day with The Star Spangled Banner. You can find it on my blog at http://american-flyer.blogspot.com under the picture of the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima. This version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is, I think, the best choral performance ever recorded. After that I linked to the Whitney Houston rendition at the 1991 Super Bowl. I think that is the best performance bar none that anybody has ever done of our National Anthem.
I couldn’t hold back the tears. I got my patriotism stirred up. At home or abroad, I love America, I love our history, I love our Christian roots, I love our Constitution, I love our progress in spite of our faults, I love that we have become and still are the greatest nation on earth. I love it because, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23). Let us preach it, and enjoy it, and do all we can to turn our country back to the God of our Founding Fathers.
It was George Washington who wrote, “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
This Independence Day let us acknowledge our obligations to God and country. Let us thank God for granting us the privilege to be born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and let us love America because it is the greatest country on earth. Let us not be ashamed of American exceptionalism. Rather, let's promote it. Let us be thankful because we are a free people and it is our right to play baseball, gorge ourselves on hotdogs, and proudly wave the flag!
“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.” – John Wayne
I hate being away at a time when the country is in such turmoil and uncertainty about who we are and our place in the world. We have a president who is a complete failure as a leader, who is completely devoid of honesty and probity, whose domestic and foreign policies are total disasters that have led to the border crisis and the crumbling of the Middle East. Obama and Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico had never been more secure. Now there is such a flood of illegals crossing that the government can’t handle them.
Obama assured us that his anti-military decimation of our Armed Forces and his persona of good will would bring Iran to the table and result in a peaceful Middle East. He boasted in 2012 that he had killed bin-Laden and that Al Qaeda was on the run. Now the sacrifice of thousands of Americans in Iraq is being squandered as the ISIS terrorist army, which is bigger than Al Qaeda ever hoped to be, rolls over Syria and Iraq, and Iran, with Russia’s help, is still working on a nuclear weapon and refuses to come to the table for talks. And Russia, unafraid of any Obama red lines, has stolen the Crimea from Ukraine.
America, the benefactor nation of the earth, is mocked, disrespected, and reviled worldwide by the same ungrateful nations that receive free handouts, and Obama, seemingly oblivious of the world that is falling apart around him, plays golf. At least Jimmy Carter could point to the Camp David Accords. Under Obama’s watch all the gains of the last thirty years are being lost. Obama compares himself with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, and has been compared by his lemmings to Jesus Christ. A more accurate comparison would be to Neville Chamberlain or Judas Iscariot.
I hate the Obama view of an unexceptional America where the Constitution, patriotism and love of country is mocked and despised. I’ve had numerous debates over the internet with liberals who have so little knowledge of our country and its founding, and so little understanding of history or the world events that made us what we are today, that they consider us all to be illegal aliens and therefore should leave the borders open for “undocumented immigrants,” that we must then take care of because it’s unfair that we have worked hard, achieved, and gotten wealthy while the illegals haven’t.
These are the low-information voters, the Blame-America-First crowd, that the left so lovingly courts, whose only contribution to intelligent discussion is ridicule and name-calling. They blame everything on racism, and bewail that we stole the whole continent from the Native Americans and ought to give it back. When confronted with action, however, not one of them is willing to give back what they personally own or have accumulated to the Indians.
I’m tired of this anti-American crowd that has no appreciation for their freedom, or the blood shed to secure it for them. I’m tired of a community organizer president who is so ignorant as to believe that Muslims had a great part in building America. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of Godless leftists who “boo” God, who rewrite history books and deny the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers, who condemn Conservatives for violating the separation of church and state because they hold Christian values, and then quote Scriptures that they don’t believe when it is convenient. I’m tired of the moral decay and the spiritual deadness that is leading America to the “ash-heap of nations.”
You know what? I don’t care what the anti-American crowd thinks.
This morning I began my day with The Star Spangled Banner. You can find it on my blog at http://american-flyer.blogspot.com under the picture of the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima. This version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is, I think, the best choral performance ever recorded. After that I linked to the Whitney Houston rendition at the 1991 Super Bowl. I think that is the best performance bar none that anybody has ever done of our National Anthem.
I couldn’t hold back the tears. I got my patriotism stirred up. At home or abroad, I love America, I love our history, I love our Christian roots, I love our Constitution, I love our progress in spite of our faults, I love that we have become and still are the greatest nation on earth. I love it because, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23). Let us preach it, and enjoy it, and do all we can to turn our country back to the God of our Founding Fathers.
It was George Washington who wrote, “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
This Independence Day let us acknowledge our obligations to God and country. Let us thank God for granting us the privilege to be born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and let us love America because it is the greatest country on earth. Let us not be ashamed of American exceptionalism. Rather, let's promote it. Let us be thankful because we are a free people and it is our right to play baseball, gorge ourselves on hotdogs, and proudly wave the flag!
“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.” – John Wayne
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